Compiled by Ellie Clark, Collections Moves Team Leader at the Natural History Museum.
Welcome to the August edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.
Digital Digest is a monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.
Sector News
Transmitting Science Upcoming Online Courses
Registration is open for a number of online training courses over at Transmitting Science. Upcoming courses include Naturalistic & Scientific Illustration, An Introduction to R, Finite Element Analysis Applied to Life Sciences and Python Machine Learning in Biology.
For a full list of courses, details on timetables, course structure, pricings, academic credits, and registration can be found on the courses open for registration page here.
NatSCA Lunchtime Chats
The new lunchtime chats are for members only and run on the last Thursday of every month.
This series is supposed to be informal; no fancy equipment is needed; it will be put out over the NatSCA Zoom platform and there is no fixed format. There will be shaky walks through stores by mobile, demos, plain pieces to camera or traditional PowerPoints if that’s the best way to share images and info. For those who want to take part please email training@natsca.org to put forward your idea; if a stable internet connection for what you want to achieve is tricky, we can put up a pre-recorded video and then speakers can jump in at the end for the discussion.
Bring your sandwiches and a cuppa and we hope to see you on the day! All members will have received a link to join via Zoom (the same link works for all sessions) – if you haven’t, get in touch with membership@natsca.org.
Where to Visit
World Museum Dino Takeover
Dinosaurs are taking over World Museum Liverpool this summer! Every Wednesday and Thursday during the school holidays will have a special focus on these prehistoric creatures.
There’s a whole host of free family fun to enjoy this summer including special workshops, curator discussions, museum trails and even some very special prehistoric visitors!
Find out more here.
World of Wasps at UCL Grant Museum of Zoology
Based on UCL research, World of Wasps brings together cutting-edge imaging, projections, commissioned artwork and virtual reality to reveal the unseen world of wasps – their homes, their lifestyles and their relationships. On display are wasps and nest specimens from around the world showing the diversity of species and nest architecture. Discover the construction secrets of these master builders, zoom inside a virtual wasp’s nest, and experience a wasp’s-eye view in a rewilded Grant Museum.
You have until 26th January to visit the first exhibition dedicated to wasps! Admission is free, find out more here.
More than Human at the Design Museum
Why has design traditionally only focused on the needs of humans, when we exist alongside billions of animals, plants and other living beings? This ground breaking exhibition offers a new perspective, one that will be crucial to enabling the planet to thrive.
This will be the first major exhibition on a growing movement of ‘more-than-human’ design, presenting a new generation of international designers whose practices embrace the idea that human activities can only flourish alongside other species and systems.
The exhibition is running at the Design Museum from now until the 5th of October 2025. More information and ticket bookings can be found here.
What to Read
Natural History Museums Can Help Save the Planet
Jack Ashby (Assistant Director, Cambridge University Museum of Zoology) has written an article in the Museums Journal about the role natural history museums play in helping to save the world, based on stories from his book Nature’s Memory. Check it out here.
From the Blog…
We have a number of fantastic blogs for you to read this month.
Hannah Clarke, Assistant Curator (Collections Access) at the University of Aberdeen, has written an article outlining the process of the removal and transportation of the University’s much-loved spider crab specimen. Find out about all the ups and downs here.
Dr Christina Thatcher and Dr Lisa El Refaie from Cardiff University, discuss fostering empathy with endangered animals through developing creative writing and drawing workshops. Head to their blog if you would like to find out more and access a toolkit so you can run your own workshops.
Where to Work
The Natural History Museum is seeking a Learning Facilitator. Part of the School and Family Learning team, Learning Facilitators make learning accessible, memorable and fun, sparking curiosity, encouraging scientific enquiry, questioning and dialogue. This might be facilitating learning in dedicated hands-on learning spaces, delivering workshops onsite, online and offsite to hosting drop-in specimen handling sessions in the galleries.
The closing date for this role is 17/08/2025. Find more information here.
B. A. Krukoff Curator of African Botany – Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
This is an exciting opportunity to join the Africa Team of Kew’s Accelerated Taxonomy department to deliver high-quality taxonomic and systematic research on the plant diversity of Africa and to apply collections-based research to African environmental and conservation challenges. The post-holder will develop their own taxonomic research plan, focussing on important and diverse plant group(s) within the African flora, whilst also contributing to the broader aims and projects of the Africa Team including the active Tropical Important Plant Areas programme.
This role post is a fixed-term appointment of 3 years. The closing date is 31/08/2025. Find more information here.
Events Manager – Oxford University Museum of Natural History
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History is seeking a dynamic, creative, business-minded Events Manager with a passion for culture and heritage to run its busy events department, including managing and growing the thriving venue hire business. Working closely with clients, managing the Deputy Events Manager and the events delivery team, and reporting to the Head of Operations, the role will work on the planning and execution of a diverse range of events, including corporate, internal, and social events, conferences, weddings, and events for other University departments, art associations and charities, as well as supporting the development and logistics of in-house public engagement events.
The closing date for this role is 15/09/2025. Find more information here.
Assistant Curator of Vertebrates, National Museums Scotland
National Museums Scotland are now recruiting an Assistant Curator of Vertebrates. Their collections comprise >200K specimens of mainly mammals and birds and the Vertebrate Biology section has a very active specimen preparation lab, with three people working full-time, meaning that the collections continuously grow. While the Museum galleries are situated in central Edinburgh, the collections are at the National Museums Collection Centre in West Granton, where the vertebrate collections are housed in new, modern facilities.
The closing date for applications is on 24 August. For more information, check out their webpage: https://careers.nms.ac.uk/job/748553.
- Conception and strategic development of the collection infrastructure at the Museum
- Further development of research with a focus on a future-oriented physical-digital object collection
- Strategic application, realization (as principal investigator) and handling of national and international third-party funded projects
Before You Go…
If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org. Similarly, if you have something to say about a current topic, or perhaps you want to tell us what you’ve been working on, we welcome new blog articles so please drop Jen an email if you have anything you would like to submit.
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